These little guys are now regular visitors to our bird feeder and they hang around long enough to pose for a picture, unless Monty is around of course, he hasn't really got the hang of birdwatching!
We came second in the quiz this week and won 15 of these to spend in the club so had the Friday lunchtime special yesterday, excellent fish and chips for $7.50 (less than £4) and enough for two so plenty of vouchers left for wine and beer.
We thought we might be making ourselves unpopular beating the regulars in the quiz, especially as we are a team of two and they are mostly fives and sixes but no, we seem to be becoming minor celebrities. Other teams now want us to join them (funny that) and they have all made us very welcome. Ian has volunteered to help out in the local library occasionally helping people to use the internet and set up email accounts etc. He was being shown the ropes on Thursday and was introduced to someone who said,'Oh we were just talking about you and your wife, you are the ones who are making that house look so nice and doing well in the quiz.' Eek, we had better be careful if we want to keep any secrets!
It is a very friendly place though, we had the local plumber round to fit a new toilet in the week (he moved from Epsom in 1981) and he invited us round for dinner, how nice.

The weekend of Zoe's visit finally arrived and we went to pick her up from Newcastle Airport on Friday evening. The airport is only a 20 minute drive from us and the flight from Melbourne only just over an hour so it makes us feel like Zoe is much closer.
On Saturday morning we walked up Tomaree Head which is in Shoal Bay at the entrance of Port Stephens Bay, the views were fabulous and gave Zoe an idea of the layout of the bay. It's still taking us a while to get our bearings, we can find our way around very easily but when we are standing on a beach we can't work out what township we are looking across at so I don't know how much Zoe was able to take in. I have included a map this time to show where things are on the bay.
We then trotted in to Nelson Bay which was very busy because there was a marlin fishing competition underway and, as usual musicians were playing along the harbour to people queuing to board their dolphin cruises. 
After that we went to pick Ian up from a talk on building kitchens at the hardware store, and we all carried on to Birubi Point which is the beginning of Stockton Beach (32km long with massive sand dunes) and watched camel riders and 4WD tours making their way through the dunes.
Monty had been home alone for a while so we went and picked him up and took Zoe on one of our regular evening walks. Ian suddenly pointed up and there was a koala, bold as brass looking down at us. He wasn't even hiding in the leaves, it is very unusual to see koalas as clearly as this, it was as if we had planted him there specially for Zoe's visit!
We finished the day with an excellent dinner at Club Lemon Tree and retired ready for another busy one.
Sunday saw us showing Zoe our favourite beaches and nature reserves in our little township and as we were going along Ian spotted a metre long goanna beside the road. We have never seen one of these here, the animals must have just come out in Zoe's honour.

It's been blisteringly hot for the last few days and, when it is like that we sometimes knock off working on the house around 4pm and head off to the beach.
This is our favourite within walking distance (or less than 5 minutes drive) and we usually have the whole beach to ourselves in the late afternoon, don't call the RSPCA when you see the photos, we take a shade tent for Monty but he just chose not to go in it today.
At about 6 o'clock, Monty sprang to his feet and I looked up to see what had caught his attention. The whole beach seemed to be moving and, as we looked closer we saw thousands of Soldier Crabs had popped up from under the sand and were scuttling around in little groups. They are very pretty (apparently tasty too when they are bigger) whenever we walked towards any they would bury themselves under the sand again. We thought they were heading for the sea but they kept changing direction so we drew the conclusion they were just scuttling for the sake of it.
Hopefully they will repeat the performance at the weekend so we can show Zoe.

 We came third in the quiz at Club Lemon Tree on  Wednesday, which was pretty respectable as we were a  team of two foreigners and the teams that beat us were both  five strong, if the Spooners and Gill were here we would  surely have won.

 The house is starting to look a  bit less grotty, the first picture is how it was to start with and the second, what it is looking like now. All our time has  been spent on it at the  moment, Ian has been clearing  scruffy grass and an old weed  filled flowerbed in preparation for a shaded seating area to the side of the house while I have been endlessly painting. All the woodwork here was dark brown (and filthy) and it is taking a good deal of cleaning and coats of paint to get it looking good.

We have put in plants that will thrive on neglect as this will be a rental and I don't expect tenants will take care of the garden. It is very hard to remember we are not doing this house up for us to live in and we have to keep reminding each other not to add extras just because we like them.

I have been working on one bedroom, which you can see before and now in the pictures, to make sure it is ready for Friday when Zoe comes for the weekend! We are very excited to be able to show her, what we think is, our little bit of paradise.
Ian has just set off to the hardware store again as we are attempting a new skill today - concreting. We have watched endless videos on Youtube and think we are ready....fingers crossed.
The sharks have been playing havoc with Surfest, every time an event gets going, someone spots a dark shadow and the beach has to be closed!

On Friday we took ourselves off to the Camping and caravan Show in Newcastle. It was huge and had everything we could hope for. We bought a freezer for our big trip and a solar panel to power it by. The only things that were missing were my cousin Sue Morgan and her husband Keith, who we usually bump into at caravan shows.
After all that excitement we didn't feel like working on the house so went to have a look at Stockton Beach instead. It is 32km long stretching from Port Stephens, where we are, and goes all the way into Newcastle with sand dunes over 30 metres high. So after all those years of sliding down Horsenden Hill on a tin tray, we can now use our skills sliding down sand dunes!
It was lucky we went to Stockton Beach when we did because it has been closed since, along with Nobby's Beach as another two sharks have been spotted. This is a bit of a shame because Surf Fest starts on Saturday, it is a big do for Newcastle and these are two of the most important surf beaches.
The wildlife is out to get us at the moment, there was a warning on the radio yesterday to shake out your shoes before putting them on as this is the height of the Funnel Web Spider breeding season and the males are out at night on the pull. I asked Ian what happens if you are bitten and don't realise it was a Funnel Web. He said you would know all right because it just stands its ground afterwards looking at you as if to say, 'How do you like those apples?'
Australian TV are very proud of their three big new programmes Gogglebox, Shark Tank (Dragons Den) and I'm A Celebrity, which is not a patch on the UK version because it is missing the vital ingredient of Ant and Dec.
We are off to try our luck in the quiz night at Club Lemon Tree this evening, this could be a disaster because a) we don't have the rest of our regular team - Steve, Karen and Gill and b) if we get Australia specific questions from the last ten years we will be stumped. However, like all competitions here, the prize money is huge so we'll give it a go.

We made an early start the next morning because we wanted to make Sydney in good time. We had hatched a plan, which seemed like genius at the time, to pick up a couple of wardrobes from IKEA while we had the caravan with us as they would not fit in the car. We reasoned that IKEA were bound to have an open car park and, if not we could park outside.
Stopped for a coffee in Kangaroo Valley which is beautiful with lovely old wooden houses and individual shops. It is also very expensive as it is less than two hours from Sydney and lots of Sydneysiders have properties there.
Got to Sydney in good time to discover, not only did IKEA not have an open car park but we had already driven into the entrance of the multi story when we realised. Luckily we saw the loading area for deliveries and had no choice but to shoot in there, it was empty so we popped Monty in the caravan so he wouldn't be spotted and adopted a confident air while heading for the goods lift. My retail years served me well and we negotiated our way through the maze of stockrooms quickly and got out on to the shop floor trying not to think about how on earth we would get back into the staff only areas again to get out.
We picked up the wardrobes and saw a shop worker going through a shutter so we dived through before it closed and were back in the stockrooms. We found our way back to the car and, incredibly, were not questioned once!
The nightmare was not over yet because the loading bay had filled up with lorries and we were trapped! After a while we decided we would have to try and back the caravan out, this is done with a knot in ones stomach at the best of times, let alone when we had to weave it through past several lorries onto a busy Sydney street in an area we shouldn't have been in in the first place. A few lorry drivers were quite helpful and stood on corners while I guided Ian out, amazingly we managed it and drove off as fast as we could for home.
We reached Lemon Tree Passage at around 5pm after our first trip away since we settled in this village, it really did feel like home as we drove back in.

We set off from Eagle Point along the Princes Highway again which winds around some very tight bends and goes up and down hills quite steeply most of the time, this is all a bit alarming as we are not really used to towing this caravan yet. So, after many sweaty miles we stopped for diesel and coffee in Oborst. These country towns are great, Oborst has a wonderful old hotel that was opened in 1901 and it has a board outside telling visitors the history of the pioneering family who founded it, as do many of the shops in the town.
As usual, the locals were very friendly and one woman told us we must visit the craft market before we left as it was really something to see. We followed her directions and found a small hall with a woman in it surrounded by jam and doillies, when she wasn't looking we managed to escape without buying anything.
Back on the Princes Highway we reached Eden before nightfall and stayed in a campsite on a bit of a sand spit (strangely yellow sand along a coast where it is usually white) with a calm bay on one side and thundering seas on the other.
While we were there a miner turned up in his truck selling opals he had mined himself. He gave anyone interested a demonstration of how he polishes them and his wife tried to flog a few bits that had been made into jewellery.
Headed off in the morning with the aim of reaching Jervis Bay. We drove through some beautiful towns, Merrimbula was particularly lovely, this is called the Sapphire Coast but it was a bit grey and drizzly so we will have to take their word for it about the sapphire seas.
We got to Jervis Bay and stayed the night in Huskisson, where the bay begins you can see people playing in the waves just feet from other people sitting on boats and chilling in completely calm water. There have been cockatoos everywhere on this trip but most of all at the Huskisson campsite.

After our weekend in the Yarra Valley we decided to make a bit of a holiday of the journey back, taking our time and travelling along the Princes Highway, which is the coast road.
We headed for Lakes Entrance, about three hours drive away and stopped in a place called Eagle Point. It was Australia day weekend so we wondered if we would be able to find anywhere but that was not the case.
On first impression the campsite seemed a bit scruffy, it was mainly made up of old caravans with little shack annexes attached which stay there all the time and we decided not to go in the water once we spotted the jellyfish from the jetty.
It started to rain so we retreated to the safety of the caravan.
The next morning we got up and went for a bit of an explore and found we were actually in a beautiful spot. There were some very swish houses along the front and loads of cockatoos, mostly white but a few black too.  

Drove down to Melbourne for Shaun's 30th birthday. His Mum, Janene, had organised a great day starting with Segway riding and lunch at Rochford Winery in the Yarra valley then the evening at a house nearby.
We were warned by the segway guy that we would eventually gain confidence and become cocky on our segways and he was right (not about me, I remained cautious throughout).
There was a girl in the same group as us, although we didn't know her, who went straight to cocky in a few minutes and consequently straight over the handle bars. Our team at least had the decency to start carefully but we had our casualties, Janene came a cropper while playing tag and both Shaun's brothers in law came off in spectacular fashion!
No lasting damage though and we finished up with a barbecue back at the house where we all stayed the night. Shaun was delighted with his West Ham shirt from Mum and Gill and his Shaun Kent Beer.
Monty spent the day in kennels and was ecstatic to be reunited with Zoe the next morning after a year apart.